India is perhaps the great economy for the fastest growth in the world in 2025, but with regard to manufacturing, it still plays catching up. The heritage advisor Manoj Arora highlights a blatant gap: “Manufacturing in India represents only 13% of GDP. These are half the rate in Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan and China. ”
While India is often positioned as an alternative to China in world supply chains, its manufacturing base tells a different story. Vietnam, for example, has developed “three times faster than India,” says Arora, attributing the slowness of India to a range of deeply rooted questions.
“Indian manufacturing depends on imports because there is a shortage of qualified personnel,” he notes. The problem, according to him, begins at the source: “The education sector is unfit to teach the skills necessary for the job market.” He adds that “the courts, bureaucracy and corruption hardly work and give factory owners a headache”.
The numbers support the diagnosis. Chinese goods exports amounted to 3.58 dollars in 2024, compared to $ 428 billion in India. Vietnam, despite its smaller size, reached $ 347 billion. In terms of growth, Vietnam exports have jumped 983% since 2005, more than double the growth of India by 339%.
Even with a projected GDP growth rate of 6.5% in 2025, India economy remains a quarter of the size of China. India is expected to add $ 383 billion to its GDP this year, while China will add 1.26 dollars. And despite the overtaking of China in the population, India has never reached the growth of two -digit GDP in a single year – something that China has done 15 times since 1980.
The Indian government is investing in infrastructure, industrial corridors and skills programs to fill the gap. But Arora’s warning is clear: without structural reform of education and governance, manufacturing will continue to be lagging behind global peers.
